The night I was no longer embarrassed to be American

Wednesday 5 November 2008 19.01 EST
First published on Wednesday 5 November 2008 19.01 EST

There has long been a wariness in the UK about expressions of patriotism, which, to the cautious, cynical British mentality, can too easily look like the outpourings of the BNP. This is not true of Americans - well, it didn't used to be. The Fourth of July, Labour Day, the endless birthdays of presidents in February that have turned into national holidays: give us a long weekend and we'll give you loud expressions of American pride. Some might see Thanksgiving as awkward - marking the time when the pilgrims stole land from the Native Americans and imposed a tradition of supersized feasts. Americans see it as an excuse for turkey-shaped confetti and an early Christmas dinner.

But all Americans who live or even travel abroad have, for the past eight years, become used to living with a glaze of protective, self-defensive and at times chippy armour. The American accent lost its aura of modernity and glamour, which it still had when I moved to Europe 20 years ago. Instead, the hint of a twangy vowel carried connotations of ignorance and arrogance: Hicksville instead of Hollywood. No matter that many expats hadn't voted for Bush: for eight years we have been represented by him.

Sarah Palin - whose Tuesday night appearance on the screens in Chicago's Grant Park got more boos than a pantomime villain from the teens and twentysomethings all around me - took the past few years to parodic extremes, and I foresaw a decade of toning down my American accent still further. If Bill Clinton was the Elvis of politics, Palin is a character from the satirical film Team America, whose theme song - "America, fuck yeah! Freedom is the only way!" - she would probably see as a statement of fact. Actually, it would have made a good victory song for her.

When it was announced that Obama had won, all 250,000 people in the Chicago park jumped and shrieked as one. Instead of hugging one another, 1960s style, we did the 21st-century equivalent: we took digital photos of each other. McCain's gracious speech was listened to with polite attentiveness but, yeah, yeah, where was Barack? No rock star had ever been more impatiently awaited.

As with patriotism, Americans have never been averse to a bit of sentimentality, but politicians' expressions of familial love have prompted cynicism over the past eight years, and never more so than when Palin used her teenage daughter's pregnancy as an excuse for spouting anti-abortion nonsense. Yet when Obama and his family finally, to mass cheers, appeared, and Obama described his wife as the next First Lady, the crowd's excitement went up to a Spinal Tap level of 11.

Michelle Obama was pilloried earlier this year for saying, "For the first time in my adult life, I am proud of my country." Her husband, ever the diplomat, changed this in his acceptance speech to "I have never been more hopeful than I am tonight." The crowd - many of whom were too young to remember even the early years of the Clinton presidency - shared these views.

But this is America. So even as we all stared up, rapt, at Obama on screen, the food stall-holders cried out over his crafted words of hope, "Whole pizzas, only $10!" "We don't care about your fucking pizza!" someone finally shouted, to general giggles. For Americans to choose a president over pizza proved that the T-shirt slogan worn by so many was right: our president is hotter than yours.